Wii U's Global Sales Surge To 489%, According To VGChartz

VGChartz has rolled out some early numbers for the Wii U's console sales, and while it's preliminary reports, it's still significant enough to warrant a mention.

VGChartz is showing that the Wii U has moved an impressive 187,028 SKUs worldwide in the previous week, which doesn't seem entirely off given the U.K.'s reported Wii U sales boost of 666%. If this is true, that would absolutely dwarf my estimate of 119,000 SKUs. Of course, VGChartz is known for being off in their numbers, so don't take these estimates as gospel, but rather as rough estimates.

In addition to the surge of Wii U hardware sales, Mario Kart 8 appears to be the second best-selling game on the top 10 chart, just trailing behind Watch Dogs on the PlayStation 4. You can see where the game ranks on the list in the image below.

As you can see, the Wii U is just behind the PS4 in global sales. This is likely to be true when the Media Create, Chart Track and NPD figures release. Also, this means the Wii U is beating the less-than-royal crap out of the Xbox One like Ronda Rousey against Misha Tate. I mean, the Xbox One just got destroyed!

While there were constant peppering from media about the Wii U dying and plenty of Nintendoom to pass around, the reality is that the system just needed some good games and a strong marketing campaign to give it that all-too-necessary sales spark in order to get back into the game.

In fact, Nintendo's marketing really paid off with Mario Kart 8, as the game not only sold more than 1.2 million copies but it also spawned a massive viral campaign centered around Luigi's Death Stare, spreading far and wide enough to even land a mention on local news stations.

Even more than that, Nintendo sees the potentiality of this virality and is getting in on it by using the community to further promote Luigi's manic, dirty riding ways, with the following Tweet being sent out by Nintendo's official UK account.